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Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
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When to visit
Attractions in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
1. Ben Thanh Market
Quick facts: Step inside and your nose will be met by a dizzying mix of grilled seafood, fresh herbs, and sweet dried fruits, while vendors sling bargains with practiced smiles. Locals and visitors weave through more than 1,500 stalls, turning haggling for silk, handicrafts, and street-food plates into a lively sport that can score you a meal for just a few dollars.
Highlights: At dusk lanterns and neon turn the aisles into a kaleidoscope, the air thick with the caramel sizzle of grilled prawns, the sharp citrus of freshly pressed sugarcane and the nutty smoke of toasted sesame from tiny woks. Longtime stallholders often open with a price two or three times what they'll accept, then trade rapid hand signals and a sly grin to settle for about 30 to 50 percent less, so knowing a few Vietnamese numbers pays off fast.
2. War Remnants Museum
Quick facts: Visitors often leave stunned by graphic war photography and life-sized military hardware that fill the galleries, with thousands of wartime photographs on display. A hush sometimes falls in the dim rooms where personal stories and evocative artifacts force people to confront the human cost of conflict, making the experience unexpectedly moving rather than purely historical.
Highlights: Climbing the narrow stairs to the top floor, you'll find walls of raw black-and-white photos arranged like a wartime scrapbook, many with faded handwritten captions dated in the 1970s that make the room feel like someone's memory chest. On the sunlit lawn out front, a UH-1 Huey helicopter and an M48 tank sit with peeling olive-green paint and readable serial numbers, while school groups often press palms to the metal and count dents aloud, treating the rust like a map of stories.
3. Independence Palace (Reunification Palace)
Quick facts: Visitors step into a cool, cavernous foyer where original 1960s control rooms and quirky broadcasting booths feel frozen in a tense, cinematic moment. A 20-meter-deep bunker and a private cinema lie beneath the halls, giving a secretive, movie-set vibe to otherwise formal state rooms.
Highlights: Architect Ngô Viết Thụ completed the palace in 1966, and inside you can still smell oiled teak while original 1960s rotary telephones and green-lit radio panels sit in a subterranean command room like props from a Cold War movie. A battered gate and a scarred stretch of lawn mark April 30, 1975, when a North Vietnamese tank drove through the main entrance, and you can climb up to the sun-warmed rooftop helipad and feel the concrete underfoot as you imagine the tense minutes that followed.
4. Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon
Quick facts: Step into the sunlit plaza and the twin red-brick towers loom above, their clocks still ticking while the bronze statue of the Virgin catches the light. You'll notice French-made stained glass and imported construction materials that give the whole place an unexpectedly Parisian air under humid tropical skies.
Highlights: Step into the sunlit square and look up: the twin red-brick bell towers rise about 58 meters each, housing six bronze bells that ring a low, chest-shaking tone on Sundays. Local worshippers slip tiny hand-written prayer notes into crevices around the statue of the Virgin Mary, and on humid afternoons the scent of incense mixes with warm stone and old bronze so you can almost taste the history.
5. Saigon Central Post Office
Quick facts: Step inside and a hush falls under soaring vaulted ceilings, where ornate ironwork and a vintage telephone bank make every corner feel like a movie set. Colorful colonial-era maps and a grand arched clock preside over bustling counters that still dispatch mail, while photographers and couples line up for the perfect postcard shot.
Highlights: Most guidebooks credit Gustave Eiffel; however, the original blueprints actually bear the name Alfred Foulhoux, a little-known authorship twist that architecture buffs love to whisper about. Step inside and the air smells faintly of ink and waxed wood; two massive maps dated 1892 stretch across the back wall, while the clack of vintage typewriters and the shine of green-painted counters under a gilt clock make the whole place feel like a living postcard.
6. Bitexco Financial Tower - Saigon Skydeck
Quick facts: A dramatic helipad silhouette punctuates the tower's skyline, and the curved glass observation floor offers sweeping, almost cinematic panoramas that stretch across the city. From up there you can watch traffic rivers and glittering bridges shrink into a toy-like grid, and the quick elevator ride makes the whole experience feel instantaneous.
Highlights: The high-speed elevator rockets you 49 floors in about 35 seconds, making your ears pop as floor-to-ceiling glass turns a sprawling tangle of motorbikes and tin roofs into a glittering patchwork below. On select evenings staff dim the lights and the deck slowly rotates through a 200-degree panorama while a soft audio guide points out rivers and bridges, and local staff whisper a story about a couple who once held a wedding reception on the helipad.
7. Cu Chi Tunnels
Quick facts: Crawling through narrow, cool earthen passages gives a startling sense of how stealth and improvisation let fighters live and move underground for months. Visitors still encounter clever booby traps fashioned from everyday objects and can peek into tiny chambers that once held kitchens, meeting rooms and medical spaces.
Highlights: Underfoot you'll squeeze through mud corridors barely 60 centimeters wide, crawling past tiny oil-lamp lit chambers and hidden kitchens in a labyrinth that stretched for more than 250 kilometers. Guerrillas rigged cunning booby traps like punji-stake pits camouflaged with leaves and baited with sharpened bamboo spikes sometimes smeared with feces to cause infection, and they passed secret orders in matchbox-sized carved wooden containers.
8. Saigon Opera House (Municipal Theatre)
Quick facts: Step inside and you feel Belle Époque opulence: gilded moldings, velvet seats, and a surprisingly intimate stage tucked behind its grand façade. Evening performances attract a lively mix of locals and travelers, and the glowing façade is a magnet for photographers snapping dramatic night shots.
Highlights: Built in 1898, the Belle Époque façade opens into a gilded horseshoe auditorium with roughly 800 red-velvet seats, where a central chandelier pours warm, honey-colored light across carved wooden balconies. On quiet nights you can hear the wooden stage sigh underfoot, a grainy, theatre-only creak that performers say helps them find the right tempo before the overture.
9. Jade Emperor Pagoda (Chua Ngoc Hoang)
Quick facts: Stepping inside, you walk into an incense-thick chamber where carved wooden deities and lacquered altars glow beneath dangling lanterns. A tucked-away ritual involves tossing a coin into a central urn to test your luck, and visitors are often struck by the dense, almost theatrical arrangement of Taoist and Buddhist icons.
Highlights: Step through a narrow doorway and you’re greeted by a cloud of incense and the low metallic clink of prayer bells, every surface crowded with lacquered altars and vividly painted statues that seem to lean toward you. Legend says the sanctuary was founded in 1909 by Taoist worshippers, and longtime locals still leave red joss-paper and tiny cups of tea on the altar as a personal bargain with the deities.
10. Binh Tay Market (Cholon)
Quick facts: A heady mix of chili, incense and fried garlic hits you the moment you enter the maze of stalls, where merchants stack mountains of spices, dried seafood and hardware in narrow, bustling aisles. Locals and touring chefs alike hunt wholesale bargains that can cut typical prices by nearly half, then duck into tiny tea or noodle stalls to recharge after a frenetic round of haggling.
Highlights: Walk through the main hall and you'll notice vendors stacking conical baskets up to three meters high while Mrs. Lan, whose family has run stall 17 for four generations, still uses a brass scale stamped 1954 to weigh dried shrimp. By dawn a neighborly ritual unfolds: at 5:30 a.m. the Phan family ladles out tangy tamarind soup from a battered blue enamel pot, the steam perfumed with star anise and crushed chili, and regulars pay with the same chit system they've used since 1949.
Traditional Sweet Dishes
Che
Che vendors in Ho Chi Minh City layer colorful beans, jellies, and fruits so the dessert looks like an edible mosaic, and street cups are as much a visual treat as a sweet one.
Banh flan
Banh flan arrived with the French but Vietnamese cooks brighten it with sweetened condensed milk and sometimes a dusting of instant coffee, creating a silky, deeply sweet custard enjoyed across the city.
Banh chuoi
Banh chuoi is often steamed or baked in banana leaves, which gives the cake a warm, caramelized banana aroma and a sticky, comforting texture that makes it a beloved snack.
Traditional Savory Dishes
Pho
Pho in Ho Chi Minh City is eaten at any hour, not just breakfast, and vendors simmer bones for hours until the broth becomes intensely fragrant, drawing crowds day and night.
Banh mi
Banh mi marries a crisp French baguette with pickled vegetables, cilantro, chilies, and savory fillings like pate or grilled pork, turning colonial ingredients into Vietnam's iconic street sandwich.
Com tam
Com tam was born from broken rice once considered inferior, and today it is Saigon's working-class comfort dish, piled with grilled pork, a fried egg, pickles, and fish sauce.
Traditional Beverages
Ca phe sua da
Ca phe sua da is made with strong Robusta brewed through a small phin filter, then sweetened with condensed milk and poured over ice, creating a potent, creamy pick-me-up for busy city life.
Tra da
Tra da is simple iced green tea served widely in Saigon, often complimentary at eateries, and locals use it as a refreshing, slightly bitter palate cleanser between rich or spicy bites.
Sugarcane juice
Fresh sugarcane juice is pressed at street stalls, sometimes brightened with lime or kumquat, and watching vendors feed long stalks into the rollers is part of the sugary, theatrical experience.
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Google MapsComments (8)
Visited in July, daily downpours made walking a slog, the War Remnants Museum was heavy but worth a visit if you like history.
Use Grab for rides, always set the exact pickup point on a main road and check the driver plate, it saves time and avoids confusion.
Way more scooters than I expected, crossing felt scary at first, locals are friendly and the coffee culture is a highlight.
Withdraw larger sums to avoid ATM fees, split cash into small bills for markets and carry exact change for motorbike taxis.
Eat at market food stalls around lunchtime, walk two blocks off the main market to find the same dishes for half the price.
Getting there
Train stations
Reunification Express (Hanoi–Saigon); regional southern services
From Tan Son Nhat, take a metered taxi/Grab or Airport Bus 109 to District 1; avoid unlicensed drivers.
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